The One Is Indivisible
The Truth Is The Whole
My first — and just about only — non-self-published work appeared in Radical Software, Vol. I No. 5, Spring 1972, under title Attitudes Toward Technology.
Once, and for long decades, The Boeing Company was a proud engineering firm justly admired for their fine and useful products.
Then, leadership hired rafts of MBA Weenies, aka Bean Counters, and gave these non-aviation people authority first over engineering and production and then over leadership itself. The MBA Weenies, of course, were trained to run cheap and make cheaper, in the name of Return on Investment (ROI).
Old timers point to the accession of McDonnell-Douglas leadership to top Boeing leadership as the moment of catastrophe, the point of downward turning, downrange consequences of which show today in Boeing’s product line and reserve assets, human and otherwise. The elevation of McDonnell-Douglas over Boeing leadership occurred even though McDonnell-Douglas was junior partner in the merger. Boeing had bought McDonnell-Douglas, a significant defense contractor, who was failing.
Late in the summer of 1997, two of the most critical players in global aviation became a single tremendous titan. Boeing, one of the US’s largest and most important companies, acquired its longtime plane manufacturer rival, McDonnell Douglas, in what was then the country’s tenth-largest merger. The resulting giant took Boeing’s name. More unexpectedly, it took its culture and strategy from McDonnell Douglas — even its commercial aviation department was struggling to retain customers.
Predictably, product quality declined, delivery dates slipped, morale went negative, and prestige all but decamped. With that went money, land, equipment, and the truly radical wealth: talent.
MBA Weenies diminished a company focused on making fine and useful products into a herd of visionaries focused on making money. However, seed grain does not restore itself, and dessert is not a meal.
Alan Mulally, an engineer, returned Boeing Commercial Aircraft Company to success and deserved prestige, and Phil Condit, also an engineer, accomplished much the same for The Boeing Company. For awhile.
The MBA Weenies with neither engineering or aircraft experience multiplied like mice, a legacy of McDonnell-Douglas’ more than of Boeing’s corporate culture.
At the moment — and inside another air travel ejection — Boeing is wind-milling in figures and sub-standard product.
Moral of the story?
NEVER prefer profit over product, and NEVER seek Return on Investment (ROI) ahead of Quality of Product (QOP). This is a vital priority. Seek profit and you will go broke and, what is worse, lose prestige. On the other hand, make a product that is needed by the generality and gets the job done well and often. You will prosper and your prestige will abound.
Note the difference between product that is needed and product that is desired, then supply the former, not the latter. Desires can be fabricated and are fleeting. Needs are constant and require no artifice to make them compelling.
Investing contains a corollary to this moral. NEVER invest for profit, for ROI. ONLY invest for building out (Greek: ecos + nomos) general utility, for QOP.
PanAm’s catastrophe began when her leaders decided to fabricate desire for travel, which always exceeds need for travel. Travel is a hardship. PanAm prospered when her leaders took care to increase travel’s comfort and prestige. When the same leaders resolved to pack their tubes by goosing desire for travel, they increased travel’s hardship, to include inviting malicious intent to attend their tubes’ ever-higher frequency of flight and packing.
PanAm donned a terrorists’ target by fabricating desire for travel in preference to curating need for travel.
That noted, be this also noted: the fundamental needs of all creatures center in communications. All the great fortunes and all the comfortable livings accrue to those who help build out communications infrastructure for the generality, to accommodate the generality’s most fundamental need: communications. Not wants, not desires, needs.
Wise investors make products to satisfy fundamental communications needs and leave fabricating or appeasing desires, appetites, to the frivolous, who never earn prestige.
Times and climes engender their own opportunities for building out (Greek: ecos + nomos) communications infrastructure. A canal here, a server farm there; a railroad here, a wireless network there; a truck here, a rocket there; a log fire here, a nuclear reactor there; a home garden here, a corporate farm there.
Whatever its details, whatever its means, whoever facilitates fundamental (necessary) communications by making fine, useful products that get a necessary job done well and often, and whoever opens new opportunities for fundamental communications, will experience comfortable results from their labors.
There is a place in this world for MBA Weenies. Bean-counting is good. It is an adjunct, not a goal, of investment, which should always and only be in building out (Greek: ecos + nomos) communications for the generality.
Product, not profit, is both cause and consequence of comfortable living.
And who protects communications infrastructure?
A country’s Police and Military Forces do that.
The plenary purpose of Police (domestic) and Military (foreign) Force is protection of their country’s free flow of fair trade (communications).
Stop the habit of worrying. Doubts are the cause of your worry. You face more difficulties because of your habit of worrying. Perform your duties sincerely without worrying for anything. When you lead a truthful life, you will not have to run after anyone or beg for favours. Once you cultivate true love for God, you will have everything in life. Experience the bliss that is within your heart without making a show of it to others. On the one side is the world and on the other, God. You cannot have both simultaneously. It is like riding on two horses which is sure to prove dangerous. Focus your mind only on God and have total faith in Him. Always think of God, both in pleasure and pain. Desire only for God. Do not worry too much about your difficulties. All difficulties are like passing clouds. When you cultivate love for God, all your difficulties will vanish in a trice.
Sathya Sai Baba – Divine Discourse, April 14, 2006 / Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription
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